DARFUR/DARFUR

A benefit reception and exhibit of images from the Darfur region.
Monday, September 18th, 6 - 10PM

JUST CONFIRMED:
Mia Farrow will join Brian Steidle and John Prendergast in speaking about thier experiences in Darfur.

ALSO ADDED:
Melle Powers will read Winter Miller’s monologue, A Mother to Her Son.

WHERE:
James Cohan Gallery
533 W. 26th. Street
New York, NY 10001

WHEN:
Monday, September 18th, 2006

6:00 - 8:00 pm Benefit Reception
$100 per person. Register at Darfur/Darfur or pay at the door.

8:00 - 10:00 PM: Open to the Public
$20 suggested donation at the door

See Darfur/Darfur for more details.

Darfur/Darfur
P.O. Box 562
Hanover, NH 03755
(323) 634-2602

GEISAI #10, the tenth edition of Kaikai Kiki’s art fair with a twist, will take place on September 17, 2006 at the Tokyo Big Sight East Hall in Tokyo. Held twice a year, GEISAI is a lively one-day event that combines hundreds of booths of artists eager to promote their works, thousands of visitors shopping and browsing through the selection, an international cast of judges to select and award the best participants, and music and entertainment. With an open-application process, Kaikai Kiki, led by Takashi Murakami, expects over 1,000 artists, as well as a few galleries, to showcase their work to more than 10,000 visitors at GEISAI #10.

A panel of judges comprised of prominent international art figures has been selected for GEISAI #10, including Marcel Dzama, Douglas Fogle, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Samuel Kung, and Kashiwa Sato. These jurors will collaborate to award gold, silver, and bronze medalists, as well as present their own personal prizes to noteworthy participants. Past judges have included Tadao Ando, Tom Eccles, Yayoi Kusama, Yoshitomo Nara, François Pinault, and Paul Schimmel.

Following the tremendous success of GEISAI #9 in March 2006, Kaikai Kiki expects an impressive line-up of talented participants at GEISAI #10. Medalists of GEISAI #9 included: Soichi Yamaguchi (Gold), Takaaki Tsuchiya (Silver), and Kazuharu Ishikawa (Bronze). Recipients of the Gold prize since 2002 include: Team Potato, Yasuyuki Nishio, Komainu, Gluten, Masao Kinoshita, Sakurako Hamaguchi, Erina Matsui, Haruno, and 284.

Promoting the shifting boundaries in contemporary art, GEISAI features not only visual art, but animation, live music and an array of unique performances. Each year, GEISAI reaches out to an international audience and attracts many galleries, television networks, magazines and other media that come to scout out the emerging talent and experience the energy at GEISAI. While appealing to a somewhat progressive audience, GEISAI still maintains its strong ties to a Japanese artistic tradition. It was designed as a unique Japanese art festival that would shape the future of Japanese art and nurture the next generation of artists.

Inspiration and History:
GEISAI’s predecessor, Geijutsu D_j_ (founded in 2000), was based on the terakoya, or “temple school” type educational model of the Edo Period. These schools provided nurturing grounds through discipline, feedback, and peer discourse, preparing young people for the professional challenges of the world. Similarly, Takashi Murakami gave advice and fostered communication in his Geijutsu D_j_, helping young people to produce, show, and promote their works. GEISAI officially began as a free-participation event in the spring of 2002.

GEISAI #10 will take place on Sunday, September 17, 2006

Hours: 10 AM to 6 PM
Location: The Tokyo Big Sight East Hall 4
(Tokyo International Exhibition Center)
3-21-1 Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-0063, Japan

About Kaikai Kiki:
Kaikai Kiki was founded by Takashi Murakami in 2001, and evolved from its predecessor, the Hiropon Factory. Its goals as an enterprise include the production and promotion of artwork, the management and support of select young artists, general management of events and projects, and the production and promotion of merchandise. With bases in Japan’s Asaka City and Tokyo, as well as Long Island City, New York; Kaikai Kiki is a unique organization looking to the future to broaden the horizons of contemporary art. For more information on Kaikai Kiki, please visit http://www.kaikaikiki.co.jp

For more information and updates on GEISAI #10, please visit http://www.geisai.net (Japanese) or http://www2.geisai.net (English).

###

For further information, images, and interviews:

Media Contact:
Antoine Vigne or Lucy Toole
Blue Medium, Inc.
T: 212-675-1800
F: 212-675-1855
lucy@bluemedium.com

REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT (Martin Keil and Henrik Mayer of )
at The City Of Cool" />

September 14, 2006 – 6:30 p.m.
Inaugural Lecture
The Eclipse of the Public: The Necessity to Revitalize the Public Sphere
Richard J. Bernstein, Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research

Each year, an inaugural lecture launches the Vera List Center’s annual theme, defining the intellectual territory that will be explored in public programs throughout the year. Professor Bernstein will discuss the meaning of the concepts of public life and public space in the works of John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, and Jurgen Habermas, and will consider how these concepts are relevant for understanding public freedom and democracy.

Future Events:

September 25, 2006M – 6:30 p.m.
Mapping. And Now We Can See it All?
With:
William Bevington, Parson Institute for Information Mapping
Daniel N. Dubno, Producer, CBS News
Joy Hirsch, Columbia University, Department of Neuroscience
Henrik Mayer, Reinigungsgesellschaft

A discussion on the different areas in which information is decoded, presented, and processed in an overstimulated culture, with a focus on the politics of information mapping in terms of what is revealed and what is concealed.

September 29, 2006 – 7 p.m.
Negativland: Adventures in Illegal Art
A Performance by Mark Hosler
Of mythical stature in the worlds of music, performance and law, Negativland presents a film/performance/lecture by one of its four members, co-founder Mark Hosler.

For over two decades, Negativland has not just touched on critical issues but has actually provoked, and in court defended, them: concepts such as intellectual property issues, file sharing, media literacy, creative activism in a media-saturated multinational world, evolving notions of art and ownership, and law in a digital age.

October 27, 2006 – 6:30 p.m.
Public Space and Sustainable Development
The Future of an Old City
With
Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, WORKac, New York
John Krieble, Office of Sustainable Design, City of New York
Victoria Meyers, Landscape Architect
Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Parsons The New School of Design
Joel Towers, Tishman Environment and Design Center, The New School

As the distinction between commerce and leisure is increasingly blurred, public space has morphed into a structure that is semi-private, semi-governmental and facilitates both commerce and entertainment. This panel considers how sustainable design—with its emphasis on energy conservation, efficiency, environmentally reflexive material specification etc.—has been deployed in contemporary public space through developers’ initiatives and government subsidies, and to what ends.

December 4, 2006 – 6:30 p.m.
Open Source on the Line
With
Cory Arcangel, artist
Daniel Mayer, CFO, Wikipedia
and others

A discussion on the contested terrain of open source culture online, and how new models and practices offer innovative artistic and political possibilities to some, and questionable author- and ownership complications to others. Panelists from different disciplines and backgrounds will explore the effects of online platforms such as Wikipedia and delicious on culture and offline systems of knowledge, as well as current challenges to open source principles such as “net neutrality.” Presented in collaboration with Rhizome.

The Contemporary Museum
2411 Makiki Heights Drive
Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822
http://www.tcmhi.org

Maria Elena González, 2006 Catalyst Artist in Residence
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu

August 25 – October 29, 2006

The Catalyst Artist in Residence program fosters community dialogue around contemporary issues through participation in the artistic process. Each Catalyst Artist in Residence program pairs an artist with a community organization in the creation of new artwork that highlights the vision of both artist and community. Our 2006 Catalyst Artist in Residence features Maria Elena González in partnership with Honolulu Habitat for Humanity.

For her residency, González created two installations. Nani’s House at The Contemporary Museum in Makiki brings the floor plan of the home of a Waimanalo family – the Kamaiopilis– to the lawn of the Contemporary Museum. The Kamaiopilis are a partner family of Honolulu Habitat for Humanity who just completed construction of their home in June of 2006. With the promise of a bright future, also comes the bittersweet loss of a home. Many old homes replaced by new Habitat houses sheltered several generations for whom demolition represents the end of a chapter in the families’ histories. Nani’s House suggests this complex dilemma by bringing the floor plan of the old Kamaiopili Family home to the lawn of the Contemporary Museum.

Built of concrete debris collected from various constructions sites around Honolulu, the materials used relate the installation to the very physical and economic fluctuations at play here in Hawaii. For instance, some of the concrete comes from hotels on the Waikiki Beachwalk currently being demolished to make way for new luxury condos and hotels. Nani, the matriarch of the Kamaiopili family, worked for over a decade at one such hotel, while raising seven children and several grandchildren in her home on the other side of the island in Waimanalo.

With Nani’s House, González has also created an installation at Waimanlo Beach Park that depicts the floor plan of The Contemporary Museum. The Muse in The Park, at Waimanalo Beach Park, the floor plan of The Contemporary Museum drawn with the same chalk paint used to mark soccer, baseball and football fields. Situated alongside the playing fields at the Beach Park, The Muse in the Park, invites viewers to play inside the museum’s floor plan. In tandem, the sculptures create a conceptual exchange between the Contemporary Museum and the Waimanalo community where the Kamaiopili family lives.

For more information about this Catalyst Artist Residency project, visit http://www.tcmhi.org

The 2006 Catalyst Artist in Residence project was organized by Wei Fang for The Contemporary Museum in partnership with Honolulu Habitat for Humanity. This program is generously sponsored by the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, the LEF Community Futures Collaborative, and the Laila Art Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation. In-kind support has been provided by ResortQuest Hawaii, Jon Duarte Design Group, and Island Demo. In addition, TCM is grateful to Melanie Kincaid, Anne Marie Beck, Jean Pittman, and Will Williams, for their contribution toward Maria Elena González’s residency. Special thanks to the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation, Hawaiian Isle Yard Service, University of Hawaii Department of Art and Architecture, the Project Gallery, Mark Chittom, Garry Kaaihue, Derrick Kiyabu, John Koga, Karen Kosasa, Wendy Kawabata, Lynne Mayekawa, Jose Oriola, Silvino Sandalo, Mariko Merritt, Winnie Patterson and Rosalind Young.

The Contemporary Museum expresses its gratitude to the Kamaiopili Family for their participation in this project.

About Honolulu Habitat for Humanity
Honolulu Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit organization whose mission is to eliminate substandard housing on Oahu. Funded by tax-deductible contributions and aided by thousands of volunteers, Honolulu Habitat builds simple decent, affordable houses on Oahu that are sold to families in need – our partner families. There is no profit added to the sale price, and no interest charged on the mortgage. Partner families invest hundreds of hours of their own labor – sweat equity – into building their homes and the homes of others. Their monthly house payments are returned to a “Fund for Humanity” that is used to build more houses. Honolulu Habitat is helping to better Honolulu’s communities and help change the world one family at a time.

About The Contemporary Museum
The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, is the only museum in the state of Hawai‘i devoted exclusively to contemporary art. The Contemporary Museum provides an accessible forum for provocative, dynamic forms of visual art, offering interaction with art and artists in a unique Island environment. The Contemporary Museum presents its innovative exhibition and educational programs at two venues: in residential Honolulu at the historic Cook-Spalding house, and downtown at First Hawaiian Center.

The Contemporary Museum
2411 Makiki Heights Drive, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822
Tuesday through Saturday 10am-4pm, Sunday noon-4pm
Discounted admission for Seniors and Students; Free to children 12 and under;
Free to the public on the third Thursday of each month.
Closed Mondays and Major Holidays.

Information: (808) 526-1322 / http://www.tcmhi.org
24 hour recorded message: (808) 526-0232

MEDIA CONTACT:
Pualana Lemelle, PR Coordinator
The Contemporary Museum
(808) 237-5235 direct
(808) 536-5973 fax
plemelle@tcmhi.org

Shifting Ground - New Perspectives on Art and Rural Culture is a conference and on-site symposium over two and a half days that seeks to address the need to develop new approaches to Public Art specifically for rural communities. The conference will cover aspects of vernacular rural culture, contemporary art practice and art theory. The second day of the conference takes the form of a tour to Rural Vernacular, a programme of specially commissioned, temporary, public artworks located in rural Clare, for an on-site symposium with the artists.

Issues and questions likely to be addressed by the conference include: How does the post-agricultural economy affect the cultural life of rural communities? How can contemporary artists engage with rural communities and vernacular rural culture? How can contemporary artists bring to light the fault-lines that exist in the rural context? Does the key to maintaining the fabric of rural communities lie in cultural activity? Do artists have anything to add to the approaches of agriculturalists, heritage conservationists, ecologists and economists? What implications does this have for artistic practice in rural contexts?

Keynote speakers Suzanne Lacy and Simon Sheikh will be joined by an impressive international line-up that includes Adam Sutherland, director of Grizedale Arts, a commissioning and residency agency based in Grizedale Forest in the Lake District of Great Britain; Fernando Garcia Dory, an artist and activist from Northern Spain whose work engages specifically with issues affecting rural communities; Kristina Leko a Croatian artist living in New York and Berlin and Translocal, a curatorial partnership based in the UK and Hungary, as well as other important contributors.

The art programme features works by Vladimir Arkhipov [RUS], Amanda Dunsmore [IRL], Patricia Hurl [IRL], Tamas Kaszas [HUN] and Therry Rudin [IRL/CH]. Translocal will host an event titled Sustainable Visions, a screening of artist films that deal with issues of sustainability followed by a discussion event.

A specially curated exhibition of works titled Local Local will also take place to coincide with the conference. It features work by a range of contemporary Irish artists, work that reveals an intimate local knowledge. This local frame of representation is informed by a vertical rather than a horizontal perspective; a knowledge that goes deeper than the surface of the landscape.

Full conference programme available at http://www.shiftingground.net/conference_programme.htm

The ICA is delighted to present the exhibition take my eyes and through them see you by the highly influential artist and filmmaker Cerith Wyn Evans.

Although his background is predominantly in filmmaking, which clearly informs and shapes his work to this day, he also harnesses an impressively wide knowledge of literature, philosophy, music and photography to create a unique and distinctive artistic vernacular. His erudition is both implicit and explicit as he creates works whose outward simplicity and elegance disguises radical and complex socio-political content. Philosophical and literary influences are most evident in his series of language-based works that contain remnants of ideas proposed by significant avant-garde movements of the Twentieth Century from Surrealism to Conceptual art and are marked by an extreme minimal beauty which on closer inspection reveal deeper, more troubling content. His sculptural ‘chandelier’ pieces – for which he is probably best known - conceal a personal canon of literature from the last century including poems, letters, short stories and philosophy - the texts being transmitted through Morse-code translated into pulsing light bulbs.

For this exhibition, Wyn Evans has conceived a set of entirely new works in direct response to the history, location and architectural particularities of the ICA. take my eyes and through them see you is also an opportunity for the artist to examine a personal relationship with the institution, which has played an important role in his development. He first visited the ICA as a teenager in the mid 1970s where he came to see Marcel Broodthaers last exhibition Décor, which included Broodthaers’ legendary piece La Bataille de Waterloo (The Battle of Waterloo), 1975. The exhibition, with its overtly critical content had a tremendous effect on Wyn Evans and will be referenced within some of the new works made for the ICA.

Wyn Evans graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1984. He began his career as a video and filmmaker and worked as an assistant to the filmmaker Derek Jarman. During the 1980s Wyn Evans made short experimental films that have been screened in the UK and abroad (his first exhibition at the ICA entitled ‘A Certain Sensibility’ was a month long series of Super 8 film screenings at the then newly opened Cinematheque, 1979). He has also collaborated with choreographer Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, Throbbing Gristle, The Smiths and The Fall among others.

Wyn Evans’ solo and group exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2000), Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland (2001), Documenta 11, Kassel (2002), Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley (2003), White Cube, London (2003), Camden Arts Centre, London (2004), Kunstverein Frankfurt and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2004), Kunsthaus, Graz (2005), The Conservatory, Barbican, London (2005). Most recently The Curves of the Needle, a touring installation developed by the BAWAG Foundation, Vienna (2005), of which Wyn Evan’s contribution went on to show at White Cube (2006) and in which something happens all over again for the very first time, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, (2006).

take my eyes and through them see you has been curated by Jens Hoffmann, Director of Exhibitions, and Rob Bowman, Curator of Exhibitions.

A limited edition artists’ publication will be produced on the occasion of the exhibition.

Institute of Contemporary Arts
Open daily 12 - 7.30pm
The Mall
London SW1Y 5AH
Phone: +44 20 7930 3647
Fax: +44 20 7306 0122
Email: info@ica.org.uk
http://www.ica.org.uk

Jessica Bradley Art + Projects is pleased to announce Luanne Martineau’s first solo exhibition, 14 September to 7 October, 2006.

Luanne Martineau’s densely layered imagery draws on multiple sources from popular and underground imagery such as Little Nemo and R. Crumb, to modernist abstraction. Her unique pin-felted sculptures are replete with 20th century art-historical associations as various as the work of Wilhelm de Kooning, Philip Guston and Louise Bourgeois. She combines labour-intensive traditional female hand work with unbridled references to the body and its unpredictable ways, creating a powerful confrontation between the comfortably familiar and the taboo. In her work Martineau engages with a long tradition of social satire in art while exploring an equally provocative dialogue with craft and the legacies of 1960s fine art.

Luanne Martineau was born in Saskatoon in 1970. She studied at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and is a graduate of Alberta College of Art and Design. She received her MFA from the University of British Columbia and currently teaches at the University of Victoria. Her work was featured in a solo exhibition at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery in 2004 and was included in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s international exhibition Drawing the World: Masters and Hipsters in 2003. Martineau’s work was also included in Just My Imagination, a major touring survey of drawing in Canada (2005-2006). Her work will be featured in the 2007 Montreal Biennial.

Currently in production, Luanne Martineau’s special edition book FREAKOUT (Temporal Bodies), brings together 8 texts ranging from German surrealist Hannah Hoch (c.1920), Oscar Wilde (1920) and Louise Bourgeois (1998) to George Bataille (1903), with documentary photographs from the UBC Architecture department as well as illustrations of the artist’s work from her exhibition at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects. Published by Flask Press, Victoria, this book will be individually bound with a thick felt cover. Watch for release date fall 2006.

FALL 2006 SCHEDULE

October 11 to November 4
In her first solo exhibition gallery artist MARLA HLADY presents a new series of drawings, including work done during her residency in Iceland in 2005. Hlady will also present several new sound objects. A reception for Marla Hlady will take place at the gallery from 6 to 8 PM on Wednesday October 11.

November 8 to December 2
BACK AND FORTH brings together celebrated Berlin-based British artist JONATHAN MONK and Canada’s MICHAEL SNOW in an exhibition which began a year ago with communication between the two artists who first met in Toronto in 2002. In response to an invitation by the gallery, Monk and Snow have produced new short film-loop pieces. Jonathan Monk will speak about his work at 7.30 PM and Michael Snow will give a solo piano concert at 9 PM on Tuesday evening, November 7. Both events take place in the Underground at the Drake Hotel. Inaugural viewing of the exhibition BACK AND FORTH will take place at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects from 6 to 8 PM on Wednesday, November 8.

November 9 to 13, Toronto International Art Fair
Booth 205. Exhibition Hall E, Metro Convention Centre: a great selection of work by gallery artists, including Barbara Probst (NYC), Sara McKillop (London), Jonathan Monk (Berlin) Jed Lind (Los Angeles) and Canadian-based artists Derek Sullivan, David Merritt, Gwen MacGregor, Shary Boyle, Lisa Klapstock, Kristan Horton and Zin Taylor, among others.
Saturday, November 11: installation at 2.30 PM and remarks at 5 PM, Lisa Klapstock’s solo installation in The News at Five: Survey, Solo, Set Piece, a daily feature at the fair selected by Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes.

December 9, 2006 to January 27, 2007
The gallery’s seasonal group exhibition HABITAT features a selection of works in various media, all related to the spaces we live in and the things we live with, real and imagined. The exhibition includes new work by Ben Reeves, Etienne Zack, Derek Sullivan, Marla Hlady, and Zin Taylor among others, and introduces the critically acclaimed Vancouver duo Hadley & Maxwell.

OTHER NEWS AND EVENTS

Six of Marla Hlady’s delicate drawings from the “Proposition for Tracing a Conversation” series have been acquired by the National Gallery of Canada where they were on exhibition from May to September with drawings by 2006 Sobey Art Award nominee Janice Kerbel.

Lisa Klapstock has been commissioned to produce a work for Power of Place, a special project at Harbourfront, September 16 to November 5, opening September 15, 6 to 9 PM. Her exhibition LIMINAL continues its cross-Canada tour this fall at the Robert Mclaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, until September 17, and from November 3 to December 17, 2006, at the Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, New Brunswick.

Luanne Martineau and David Merritt have works on view in the exhibition FRAY until January 7, 2007, at the Textile Museum (55 Centre Avenue, St. Patrick subway), 416-599-5321. Tuesday to Friday 10 to 4, Sunday noon to 4. Closed Saturdays.

Zin Taylor, who is currently residing in Antwerp, will participate in the group exhibition North by Northwest, at Isabella Botolozzi Galerie, Berlin, November-December 2006. Taylor’s new 28 minute video Put Your Eye in Your Mouth, is a conversational documentary recording a series of lateral and obscured narratives related to famed German artist Martin Kippenberger’s Metro-net subway entrance located in Dawson City, Yukon. This work, developed from a series of trips to Dawson city over the last three years, will be exhibited with an accompanying publication at Presentation House in Vancouver later this year. Zin Taylor’s first solo exhibition will take place at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects in spring 2007.

From November 5, 2006 to January 28, 2007, work by Derek Sullivan and Shary Boyle will be seen in the biennial exhibition ART ON PAPER at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Watch for fall 2006 issue reviews of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s Songs of Praise for the Heart beyond Cure in Bordercrossings and Canadian Art, a feature article on Shary Boyle in Canadian Art and articles including other gallery artists in C Magazine.

SOBEY ART AWARD 2006
presented by Scotiabank

The Sobey Art Award exhibtion, presented by Scotiabank, will be on display at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal from October 17, 2006 to January 7, 2007

The exhibition features works from the five finalists for the Sobey Art Award 2006 including:

West Coast: Steven Shearer
Prairies/North: Annie Pootoogook
Ontario: Janice Kerbel
Québec: BGL
Atlantic Canada: Mathew Reichertz

The Sobey Art Award is a biennial award to be given to an artist under 40 who has had an exhibition in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated. A panel of curatorial advisors, one from a major gallery in each of five regions, chose the short-list and will determine the winner. The winner of the 2006 Sobey Art Award will be announced at a gala reception at the the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal on Tuesday November 7, 2006, all artists and curators will be in attendance.

THE CURATORIAL PANEL 2006:
West Coast: Christina Ritchie, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
Prairies/North: Patricia Deadman, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina
Ontario: Wayne Baerwaldt, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary
Québec: Stéphane Aquin, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
Atlantic: Shauna McCabe, The Rooms, St. John’s

For interviews or information on the Award and artists, contact:

Eleanor King, Coordinator Sobey Art Award
(902) 424 5169
C/O Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
1723 Hollis Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 3C8

www.sobeyartaward.ca
info@sobeyartaward.ca

Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
1380 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal, Québec, H3J 2T9

After his participation in the group show EGOmania, Ugo Rondinone makes his return to the Galleria Civica di Modena with a solo exhibition entitled giorni felici, curated by Milovan Farronato with Angela Vettese. The exhibition presents a series of new works some of which created especially for this show.

Ugo Rondinone has been defined as a visionary artist trapped in reality. In fact, through his articulate production in which styles and media are deliberately combined, his poetics allow us to access his inner-most worlds, dominated by melancholy and resignation, leading us along a similar path of inner self-analysis.

The exhibition is split into five stages which correspond to just as many moments of an existential journey, or rather to just as many chapters of the story of one’s life. Also in this case, a range of media is used and the works are set out to reflect five different environments each of which is dominated by a particular colour: starting with white, we move on through blue, red black to end with silver. Each reflects perhaps a psychological state, or a temperament, or even a season of life.

Special guest: John Giorno will perform during the opening day inside Ugo Rondinone’s show.

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The Galleria Civica of Modena opens the first solo exhibition in an Italian museum of Yayoi Kusama, the most important living Japanese artist.

The Exhibition “Yayoi Kusama. Metamorphosis”, curated by Angela Vettese with Milovan Farronato, is designed by the artist herself with environment installations as well as paintings and object sculptures: the spectators will walk through an environment full of coloured dots of light: this is certainly one way of showing just how dazzling a simple domestic space can be, and therefore, just how estranged the things we consider nearest to us may become; or through a room full of bio-morphous shapes forming an amusing labyrinth which then leads to the paintings in which the artist maniacally draws little circles or fills in boxes, shoes and other unlikely containers with unsettling little shapes, like micro-organisms besieging us, or like tiny excrescence growing out of control.

The key topics on which the exhibition is based, as are the entire works of the artist are therefore the love/hate relationship with control, but also manual work and creativity in general as an antidote to anxiety.

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Production and Organization: Galleria Civica di Modena and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena
tuesday-friday 10.30am/1pm – 4pm/18pm, saturday, sunday and holidays 10.30am/6pm
closed on monday
15th, 16th, 17th september, during festivalfilosofia the exhibitions will be open fom 9am to 11pm

15th Sept 2006 - 7th Jan2007

Ugo Rondinone. Giorni felici,
Palazzo Santa Margherita,
c.so Canalgrande 103, Modena (Italy)

Yayoi Kusama. Metamorphosis,
Palazzina dei Giardini,
c.so Canalgrande, Modena (Italy)

Opening 16th september 2006, 12pm
info tel +39 059 203 2919/2940
http://www.comune.modena.it/galleria
galcivmo@comune.modena.it

The design of clothing—for protection, profession, or spectacle—has shifted dramatically throughout the past twenty-five years. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) exclusive exhibition, Breaking the Mode: Contemporary Fashion from the Permanent Collection, presents more than fifty designers who were at the forefront of this movement—designers who introduced subversive elements into the system, deconstructed its conventions, and changed the rules for good about what is considered fashionable.

Throughout history, the ideal body and silhouette have changed, and so too have the clothes that adorned them. During the first half of the twentieth century, an hourglass figure was most coveted, and designers like Christian Dior used construction techniques—cutting, layering, boning, and stitching—to give a rigid form, and a narrow waistline to the garment. Decades later, designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier and Hussein Chalayan would be the new breed of fashion pioneers who redefined beauty in silhouette and technique.

Essential to this fashion revolution were advancements in textile technology. Rather than relying solely on tailoring techniques, designers could now create dimensional garment shapes utilizing synthetic fibers and innovative processing methods. No longer did they create garments to shape the contours of the body; now, the body would give shape to the dress, while still other clothes would be independent of the body’s form all together.

In addition to exploring modern technology, contemporary designers pushed the conceptual limits behind their creations by referencing historical fashion or creating fashion as art. Vivienne Westwood’s Mini-Crini collection from the 1980s was inspired by petticoats of the nineteenth century, while Burberry, Martin Margiela, and Comme des Garçons all referenced officer coats of World War I for their updated versions. Other designers illustrate the blurring lines between fashion and art, such as Issey Miyake, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, and installation artist Andrea Zittel.

Included in the exhibition are works from the following designers: Gilbert Adrian, Azzedine Alaïa, Nobuyoshi Araki, Christopher Bailey, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Geoffrey Beene, Pierre Cardin, Hussein Chalayan, André Courrèges, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Jean Dessès, Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Mariano Jose Maria Bernardo Fortuny, Dai Fujiwara, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Rudi Gernreich, Romeo Gigli, Madame Grès, Tim Hawkinson, Yoshiki Hishinuma, Akihiko Izukura, Charles James, Norma Kamali, Rei Kawakubo, Patrick Kelly, Lachasse, Christian LaCroix, Karl Lagerfeld, Hervé Léger, Georges Lepape, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, A. H. Metzner, Issey Miyake, Yasumasa Morimura, Franco Moschino, Thierry, Mugler, Cai Guo Qiang, Reiko Sudo, Hiroko Suwa, Takezo, Olivier Theyskens, Philip Treacy, Madeleine Vionnet, Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto, and Andrea Zittel.

Credit:
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and was supported by the museum’s Costume Council.